YOUNG MAN'S COUNSELLOR.

CHAPTER I.

YOUTHFUL DAY-DREAMS DISSOLVED.

IVE me your hand, my dear young friend, and I will lead you to the dark passages and the rugged steeps whose forbidding shadows fall gloomily on the highway of life.

I will also conduct you to the green and sunny spots whereon you may indulge in innocent delights. Open your heart to my counsels! I will teach you how to escape the teeming dangers, which, like troops of ill-omened phantoms, wait in the "slippery places" of youth, seeking his destruction. I will unfold to you the secrets of

success and of eminence in this life, and the sure means of winning a crown of glory in the next!

It is, without doubt, a very joyous thought to you, that you have become a young man.

Manhood

has long been the fairy land of your boyhood's reveries. Your full heart swells, as you exclaim:

"Time on my brow hath set his seal;

I start to find myself a man."

Your spirits flow in rich currents of feeling, and your lively imagination paints the most inviting pictures of the future. To you, life is as the lovely vale of Arno, with its enchanting scenery of groves and gardens, grottoes, palaces and towers; its transparent lakes, delicious air, and sunny skies. You can comprehend the poet, who says:

"To sanguine youth's enraptured eye,
Heaven has its reflex in the sky,
The winds themselves have melody,

Like harp, some seraph sweepeth
A silver decks the hawthorn bloom,
A legend shrines the mossy tomb,
And spirits throng the starry gloon,
Her reign when midnight keepeth.'

It seems a pity to dim so fair a vision. I feel sad, as I proceed to break the sweet enchantment, and by touching it with the wand of truth, to overcast it with clouds and storms. But I should not be a faithful friend, if I did not assure you that these rosy anticipations are destined to be followed by disappointment. You must and will learn the truthfulness of the following sweetly solemn strain :

"Little we dream, when life is new,

And nature fresh and fair to view,

When throbs the heart to pleasure true,

As if for naught it wanted

That year by year, and ray by ray,
Romance's sunlight dies away,

And long before the hair is gray

The heart is disenchanted."

Let us walk forth into the fields, and learn a lesson from yonder husbandman. He is casting handfuls of seed broadcast upon the upturned soil. A moment's reflection teaches you that very much of the forthcoming harvest depends upon that sower and his seed. If he has properly chosen and prepared the soil, if the seed be of high quality, if it be

sown in proper quantity, and harrowed with all due skill, the conditions of a good and abundant harvest are fulfilled, and may be reasonably expected. But if he has scantily sown poor seed in an ungenial and neglected soil, a good harvest is out of the question. The application of this figure to yourself is easy. You are now a sower of seed on the field of life. These bright days of youth are the seed-time. Every thought of your intellect, every emotion of your heart, every word of your tongue, every principle you adopt, every act you perform, is a seed, whose good or evil fruit will be the bliss or bane of your after-time. As is the seed, so will be the crop. Indulge your appetites, gratify your passions, neglect your intellect, foster wrong principles, cherish habits of idleness, vulgarity, dissipation, and in the after years of manhood you will reap a plentiful crop of corruption, shame, degradation, and remorse; and it inay be,

"Year by year alone

Sit brooding in the ruins of a life,

Nightmare of youth, the spectre of yourself."

But if you control your appetites, subdue your passions, firmly adopt and rigidly practise right principles, form habits of purity, propriety, sobriety and diligence, your harvest will be one of honor, health happiness; and,

"After-time,

And that full voice which circles round the grave,
Will rank you nobly."

That you have reached the period of youth, is,

therefore, for you, a very serious fact.

"Great des

tinies lie shrouded" in your swiftly passing hours. Great responsibilities stand in the passages of every day life. Great dangers lie hidden in the by-paths of life's great highway; and syrens, whose song is as charming as the voice of Calypso, are there to allure you to destruction. Great uncertainty hangs over your future history. God has given you existence, with full power and opportunity to improve it, and be happy. He has given you equal power to despise the gift, and be wretched. Which you

will do, is the grand problem to be solved by your choice and conduct. To you, so young, so inex